


In My Life

by talesofsuspense



Series: Happy Steve Bingo 2019 [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (kind of), Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Nightmares, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-26 19:43:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20747705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talesofsuspense/pseuds/talesofsuspense
Summary: As a kid, Steve has a lot of nightmares. They rise like a wave with fevers his mother wills away with washcloths and soup, and they leave him shaking in their wake.





	In My Life

**Author's Note:**

> For the square "Comfort From Nightmares" on my Happy Steve Bingo card.
> 
> There is a small bit of me describing war-related injuries and reactions to those, but it's not overly gory/violent because that's not my type of thing. Still, figured I'd put a little warning in!
> 
> I literally wrote this in 3 hours at 5 in the morning because I read another (completely unrelated - star trek au) fic that messed me up emotionally (in a good way) and the first paragraph this got stuck in my head and I _had_ to get up and write. So I honestly don't know how cohesive this is, but it's here anyway!

_ You’re a restless sleeper _ , Tony will point out when they both wake at roughly the same time as the sun is just starting to peek through the curtains the morning after Steve works up the nerve to ask Tony to say the first time. Steve will apologize with a voice that sounds like tires over gravel. He will ignore the opening Tony left for a conversation and he’ll get up and switch his pajama bottoms for jogging pants and leave his own room first.

\---

As a kid, Steve has a lot of nightmares. They rise like a wave with fevers his mother wills away with washcloths and soup, and they leave him shaking in their wake. He dreams of large, dark figures towering over him, thundering words at him that he can’t recall when he wakes up. He dreams of walking down the street and seeing skeletons and looking down at his own hands to see bones, too. He dreams of storms whipping in with loud winds and pounding rain and the feeling of his home shaking.

When he wakes up gasping and sweating his mother will hold him through it and calm his nerves. He’ll relax to her voice softly singing in his ear until the sun is high enough in the sky that she has to leave for her first job.

\---

_ Bad dreams? _ Tony will ask, months later, when Steve wakes up too late and Tony is standing in the entrance to the bathroom already dressed with a toothbrush hanging from his mouth. Steve will offer a sharp nod and look away to slip on his tshirt from where it hangs off the bedside table. He will pretend not to hear Tony’s sigh when he leaves to lick his wounds in his own room.

\---

When he goes to war, they are all living a nightmare. That doesn’t stop them from creeping into his sleep, though, reaching into his mind with long claws that leave nothing but darkness behind. He dreams of what he sees, of his fellow soldiers vomiting up their rations when they see they bombs and mines and traps make their brothers-in-arms bloody, when it takes the lives of people they’ve spent night after night lying in dirt next to. He dreams of bodies, reanimated, asking him why he wasn’t early enough to save them and when he chokes out an apology it will be Colonel Phillip’s voice in his head echoing  _ you are not enough _ . He dreams of loud, exploding bombs that wake him up with a sense of relief that, this time, it wasn’t a real bomb. 

His eyes are always stinging when he looks up from his cot, meeting Bucky’s eyes. Bucky is always awake, too, shivering with his own demons. They both crawl off their cots and outside, talking out clouds of hot breath into cold air huddled under a dying tree on the edge of their camp. Steve relaxes, then, next to his best friend, the man he considers his brother.

He relaxes next to him until Bucky, too, becomes a subject of his nightmares. Until his mind plays a cruel but deserved loop of Bucky falling, of Steve failing to catch him. After that, when he wakes up he stares with stinging eyes at the new, unfamiliar body curled up on the cot across from him, sleeping until they are all forced to get up and get moving. 

\---

_ Sometimes I have nightmares about Obadiah _ , Tony will say one night-- morning, when he walks out into the common area to find Steve sitting on a couch, staring blankly at a wall. Steve will stay looking forward while Tony recounts his latest nightmare, step by step, baring his whole mind in an attempt to show Steve he’s not alone. He will remain silent throughout the whole thing, but when Tony finishes he’ll turn his head just slightly toward him and say  _ you should talk to someone about that _ , and Tony will laugh and lean against Steve’s side and Steve will allow himself a smile and close his eyes, just for a second.

\---

After Steve wakes up over half a century into the future, he avoids sleep altogether. He tells himself he doesn’t need, keeps his limbs moving as much as possible, pushing through the sluggishness of exhaustion as it creeps up on him after two, three, four, five days without sleep. He doesn’t want to give the nightmares a chance to catch up with him. 

(Of course, he can’t run forever. And when the nightmares catch him and pull him back under it’s to all the scenes from before amplified with a scene of a graveyard that stretches for miles with gravestones of every person he knew from then. When he wakes up, with tears in his eyes and sweat covering him head to toe, he’s freezing. Like he can still feel the embrace of the frigid Arctic ice, even in his warm apartment.

He turns up the thermostat. Two degrees up every night, two degrees down every morning.)

\---

_ Bucky- I’m sorry, Bucky,  _ Steve will gasp out one night without opening his eyes, waking only halfway with shivers rippling up and over his whole body, his fist clenching Tony’s terrifyingly expensive sheets too tight. Tony will look over from where he’s resting with his tablet propped on his chest. He will turn the tablet off and set it on his own bedside table and roll slowly towards Steve, running his hands carefully down Steve’s chest, rubbing gentle circles into his neck, massaging the back of his hand until Steve’s fist relaxes. Steve will blink his eyes open just slightly to meet Tony’s brown eyes and Tony will wind his arm around his waist and smile and say  _ sleep _ and Steve will.

\---

When the Avengers are called together for the first time, Steve feels out of his element, useless. He feels like he has nothing to offer, knows he isn’t on the same level as Banner, or Romanoff, or Stark. He fights bad guys with his fists and his teammate with his words and when he goes home he falls asleep to faceless figures laughing at him, telling him just how much he doesn’t know, telling him how wrong he was. He dreams of Tony falling back through the wormhole, of reaching out, stretching his arms as far as he can, trying to catch him- he wakes up and thinks of the feeling of the calluses on Tony’s hand when he shook it. 

\---

Some nights Steve will wake to the feeling of the bed shaking. He’ll blink his eyes open to the sight of Tony curled away from him, jerking and gasping in his sleep. He will think of his own nightmares of Bucky falling, of Tony falling, or himself unable to catch them. He will think of his mother, of how she was always right there to catch him when he himself fell. He will roll himself toward Tony and wrap his arms around his waist and put his face onto Tony’s pillow and he will sing, with a shaky, unused voice, the song his mother used to sing him a lifetime ago. He will sing until he feels Tony stop jerking, feels him relax in his arms. 

\---

One of Steve’s favorite things about the future ends up being the music. No one expected him to like it, and if he’s honest he understands why. It is very different from what he grew up listening to. Still, he likes it. There are decades of it to catch up on with vastly different genres and a much more diverse set of voices than what he knew from before. He is predictable in some of what he likes (The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, Marvin Gaye) and surprising in the rest of it (The Rolling Stones, Guns N Roses, Janis Joplin). He listens to AC/DC with Tony when he sits in the lab, or when Tony drives. He tries Adele, Lorde, and Beyonce when he draws and ends up creating a special playlist. He falls asleep to Hozier and Florence and the Machine. 

The music now is a soothing bandage slapped on the wounds from the past, and from the future. A pair of headphones and the world disappears for two, three, four minutes. A love ballad his foot follows like a reflex. A rock song about the devil that reaches and reaches into his mind, tugging on the roots of his nightmares, loosening their grip on the branches of his mind. He can throw himself into a lake of songs about death, life, picking up the pieces of yourself, and he can come out feeling cleaner. It’s a link, a connection, too. If he looks at Tony and his breath catches for a moment too long and his lungs are left stinging, he can turn up the Led Zeppelin song and look at the twinkle in those dark brown eyes and not have to speak. And Tony will still understand. He thinks his mother would like the music of the modern world, too.

( _ It’s the closest thing to a religious experience that I’ve ever had _ , Tony tells him when he presses a Pink Floyd vinyl into his palm. Steve thinks about his own unanswered prayers and his mother’s rosary lost somewhere in the Atlantic and pulls out his record player.)

\---

One night Steve will sit with Tony at his side, sharing a set of headphones and watching the sun rise over the city from the top of the tower. Tony will be warm and Steve will be freezing and Tony will press himself closer without Steve having to say a word.  _ In my life, I've loved them all _ , will be sung softly in his ear.

_ I have nightmares about falling _ , Steve will say. He won’t specify if he means Bucky, Tony, or himself, because it doesn’t matter. The sun will be orange on the top of the buildings that are beneath them, red shadows in the alleys the rays can’t fully touch. Tony will hold Steve’s cold hand in his own hot hand and Steve will be warmed from the inside out, first by an emotion he has a name for and has yet to give voice to, and second by the sun. He will wonder what he’s waiting for as the heat melts the remaining ice off of him. The ice will creep back in, it always does, but Tony stays too, a burning force rivaling that of the sun. 

_ I love you _ , Steve will say for the first time, and let Tony pull him in.

**Author's Note:**

> Title and lyrics at the end are from "In My Life" by The Beatles. A Steve song if there's ever been one.


End file.
